


Let's put our faith back in mayhem

by marsellia_rose



Series: The world is just a teller and we are wearing black masks [3]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Angst, Fake AH Crew, Free Play, Gen, Immortal Fake AH Crew, Mad King Ryan, Murder, No Proofreading We Die Like Men, Pre-Fake AH Crew, Ryan-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 13:30:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9442967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marsellia_rose/pseuds/marsellia_rose
Summary: The Mad King. Free Slay. The Vagabond.Ryan Haywood.He’d lived a lot of lives. Been a lot of people. Over multiple states and in varying degrees of legality, he’d thrived.Ryan's backstory for Immortal Fake AH Crew au.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Fall Out Boy's Rat a Tat Tat. Newly edited to reflect where the story is going.

The Mad King. Free Slay. The Vagabond. 

Ryan Haywood. 

He’d lived a lot of lives. Been a lot of people. Over multiple states and in varying degrees of legality, he’d thrived.

But it started with Ryan Haywood.

Ryan Haywood seemed to have a relatively normal life. He was married to a beautiful woman. Lived in a nice house. 

He was a family man. He had a wife. Kids. He was a computer technician. He just wanted to live his life- he was happy, just living this life. He’d had dark thoughts before- was no stranger to them- but they didn’t define him, didn’t rule him. Not anymore. Not for a long time now. 

He had a family that he had to look out for. A new family, young family. But it was his. 

And then they moved from Georgia to Austin, Texas. 

It’d been a drive-by. Meant to just cause harm. And it did. His wife. His kids. 

Gone in an instant.

He was left with nothing. He was nothing. No one cared- cops, passerby’s. No one cared. His whole world came crumbling down around him in an instant, and the city continued on like nothing had happened. Everything that was good and normal had been taken away in an instant.

No one in the city cared about anything but their own damn greed. Everyone looked out for themselves, and no one else. 

Even the officials in the city only served themselves. They didn’t care about the people who had elected them- they only cared about furthering their wealth and power. 

Ryan had always been good with guns. Better with knives. He’d had a whole life, a life full of long and dark things. He’d had to fight to get where he was now. And really, all he needed was a push back in the right direction.

This gave him that. 

And so the Mad King was born.

The Mad King was more of an idea than a persona at first. A grand punishment for this whole corrupt city. Born from the mind of a broken man, who’d lost too much without any satisfaction of revenge. It was a way to make them bleed.

It was a bad idea cultivated over many dark hours sat alone, with no one to comfort him and nothing to do but plot. It was the genius invention of a disillusioned spirit. It brought out a side of him he’d thought he’d long since buried- a twitch in his fingers, a grin that never quite reached his eyes. 

All he needed was a proper first victim. 

While he was planning, he also worked. He needed money for supplies, and so he continued to fix computers. Which is how he ended up with the mayor’s computer. 

And that’s when he discovered just how deep the corruption was. The mayor was tied up in just about every major scandal that occurred in their city, including child porn and trafficking. 

By now, Ryan knew that the cops wouldn’t care. No one in their city would care.

Which was fine.

He’d make them care. 

\--

Edgar is the one in the hole.

That’s how it started.

A cryptic note spray painted in bright red across mayor Edgar Velasquez’s office, with a gold crown spray painted next to it. 

And so began the reign of terror. The reign of the Mad King. 

He killed chaotically. The systematic murder of all the government officials occurred, with no one able to stop him. Austin belonged to a new power now.

Gone was the mayor, so willing to let things slide.

Gone was the commissioner, so easily bribed.

Gone were the councilmen, embezzling funds.

Only the Mad King stood tall and proud.

The people in the city were afraid. The Mad King was a terror, the man who buried their mayor alive. The man who chopped up the commissioner and delivered his body parts to the four corners of the city. The man who burned the council alive in the very room where they met.

And he almost felt peace, having brought about this terror. 

He perfected the persona of the Mad King.

A kilt, and suit jacket. A crown. The Crown- his revolver, marble and gold inlay, with custom made gold cased bullets. 

The crown was meant for killing in style. It was meant to make a point. And it did. People stopped killing each other for fear of the Mad King. The psycho who ruled their city. 

SWAT Teams rolled in. Federal agents rolled in.

The Mad King killed them all. Left their heads on stakes in the middle of the square, chopped up their bodies and scattered them around the city like some sort of twisted scavenger hunt. 

The city lived in permanent fear of this unseen monarch and his murderous rage. There was a peace, of sorts, but it was an unquiet peace, a peace of fear, not of true peacefulness. 

It was beautiful, and glorious, and satisfying. It was everything Ryan Haywood could ever have wanted as vengeance.

And that’s when he met Mica Burton. 

He could tell from the first time he met her that she had serious potential. She was running her own street crew- or had been, till they’d been killed. But she’d gotten herself out, and was looking to start over.

He offered her a place to stay, and then offered to train her.

He wasn’t sure what it was, but something about her made him want to make sure she succeeded. She reminded him of someone else, from long ago, someone he'd long since tried to forget about.

She was a quick study, too, and great shot. A genius with a knife. 

He knew that she was gonna be great. 

And he was getting tired. He’d gotten his vengeance, and now he needed something else in his life. So he groomed his successor, and created the Mad Queen- the perfect replacement. 

Eventually the Mad King’s reign had to end.

But the Mad Queen’s reign would begin.

And so Ryan moved. Austin had nothing left for him, and he needed to reinvent himself. Eventually he found himself in Los Vegas. He’d regained a taste for blood and he wanted more. He wanted to go back to this life- after all, what was the use in pretending he was anything other than a killer now? And where better to start his new criminal career than Los Vegas? 

And that’s when Meg Turney appeared.

She was a nobody. Just some hotshot girl with a gun. Dollface, she wanted to call herself, only no one would take her seriously. 

She wanted to team up with him. She was a clever thing, had done her homework. Knew who he was, what he had done. Knew he was a force to be reckoned with. 

He didn’t want to work with her. She was young, and probably talented, but too friendly. Too much, and he never liked having young, unpredictable partners. They were the sort to get you killed. 

But she wasn’t easily deterred. She refused to leave, even as he tried to get rid of her. And she proved herself, time and time again, that she did have both the talent and the conviction to do this job.

So he decided to hear her out.

She had two other partners. Tyler Coe and Mariel Salcedo. They called themselves Free Slay. Those two were the behind the scenes type- tech, and such. Something Ryan had never had the taste for, had always thought about freelancing out. 

But Meg wanted a partner, someone to actually fight with her. And Ryan could give her that.

So Free Slay started to rule Los Vegas.

They killed without abandon. They were like Bonnie and Clyde, only without sex and their own demise. 

They were brilliant together.

The sort of brilliant that eventually has to burn out. 

They set up elaborate heists. Robbed casinos, dressed to the nines in silver and black. Stole large quantities of casino chips and never cashed them. They were elaborate, glamorous, and ridiculous. They lived in penthouse suites and drank from diamond glasses.

It was fun, while it lasted. 

But eventually their glamorous heists, their ridiculous lifestyles had to end. Ryan was tired, again, and Meg needed something different. 

But now she had a reputation. She could be Dollface and people would listen. 

So he left her in Vegas, and moved on again. She ruled alone, a terror in her own right.

And he found himself in Los Santos. Bought a jacket, and a skull mask, and started taking mercenary jobs. He didn’t want to be a terror right now, just wanted to work. Just wanted to kill, to make other people hurt and bleed and scream. 

Called himself the Vagabond.

He grew a reputation for himself as a ruthless killer. Eventually word was spread for who he might have been- whispers and rumors, without any real proof.

He was a ghost story.

He had multiple apartments all over the city. Warehouses, too. Soundproofed, with pressure cleaners set up so he could take care of his own messes. 

He did both on-site kills and off-site kills. Would kill a man in his own home, or take him back to one of his places and torture him a bit first. 

Just depended on what you were willing to pay. 

He was known for being terrifyingly efficient. Most gangs who used freelance agents used him. And it wasn’t like he made hiring himself easy. There were all sort of hoops you had to jump through, so he knew you weren’t a cop.

He was secure. 

He was lonely. But he didn’t trust anyone, didn’t want to let anyone close. He couldn’t trust anyone. 

He knew better. He’d gotten lucky, before, with Meg, with Mica. But he’d never really trusted them- never showed them his true colors. He'd long since learned that lesson. But this was Los Santos. Everyone looked out for themselves, here, and he’d do well to do the same. So he did. No one ever saw his face- he wore the black skull mask permanently. He also applied face paint meticulously, even if no one ever got to see it. 

To the gangsters in Los Santos, he was the thing that went bump in the night. They tried to kill him, at first. But once they realized they couldn’t- once they realized he had no loyalties to anyone- they all used him against each other. 

He helped start and end street wars. 

That’s when he met Geoff. He’d heard of the Fake AH Crew, and the Roosters before that. He knew who Geoff was when he approached him.

Geoff still managed to surprise him, though.

Geoff didn’t want to hire him for one job.

He wanted to hire him permanently. Wanted him to work for them, to help him make the Crew what it should be- what he thought it could be.

And Ryan met the rest of the crew. Jack, the pilot, quiet spoken and clearly morally sound. Gavin, the wild child, who’d flown from Britain to America to escape his demons, who was glitzy and glamorous and ridiculous and reminded Ryan of Meg, in some regards. Michael, all sharp corners and angry remarks, clearly running from his past, from Jersey, trying to escape what they’d wanted him to be, trying to be his own man. Ray, quiet and unsure and clearly darker than any of them gave him credit for, clearly someone who’d done things no one could imagine.

And Ryan was willing to join. But he didn’t trust them. And he was afraid, afraid of disappointing them. They’d heard the rumors, but they were all so young, so much better, and he’d always had a penchant for truly brutal violence. Even Meg had found him a bit disturbing at times.

He was the man who ruled a city in pure terror. He lived off of it. He was more violent, more bloody than they could imagine. 

But he worked with them, and bit by bit started to trust them.

Eventually he even told them a little bit about who he’d been. Told them about the Mad king. Told them about Free Slay.

But they didn’t seem bothered by it. Instead, they seemed to live on his violence.

It balanced them out.

And finally, for the first time in years, he felt like he’d found a home.

**Author's Note:**

> It's shorter, cause his story doesn't start till he's an adult. Gavin is next.


End file.
